


Once Upon A Time

by thaumaturgeAggrieved



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Other, Part of a trade for a friend, this is my first fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-10 20:39:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7005559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thaumaturgeAggrieved/pseuds/thaumaturgeAggrieved
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>ONCE UPON A TIME your name was Mituna Captor...</p>
<p>But is that who you are now?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Upon A Time

ONCE UPON A TIME, your name was Mituna Captor. You were just a young troll, looking for a way to survive in this harsh world. Life up until this point had been cruel to you, and you had yet to turn six sweeps old. You never asked to see so much destruction, and you never asked to hear so much death. It haunted you, plagued your dreams and turned them to nightmares. You saw people you didn’t know, you saw people you did know, and you saw people that one day you would know, and every single one of these people died in some horrific way or another. You burned yourself with a crackling light you couldn’t ever hope to control. Your body was fire, and your visions were poison.

When they came and held you down you screamed and sparked and burned away at everything that touched you until the searing pain became too much and you had to stop. Then a foreign fire and a putrid smell so very unlike your own stormy scent set in and your shoulder was lit aflame with white hot pain and sizzled as a damning mark was branded into your flesh. Then you were just a simple slave in an old man’s house, taking care of menial chores and doing the things your young, spry body could do that his couldn’t. You lifted heavy objects. You helped with any sort of electrical issues. Sometimes, you washed dishes, though with your clumsiness you always ended up breaking them. The old man wasn’t kind, not in the slightest. He was cold and distant, and never spoke to you other than to give you an order. At least he never hit you, you always thought. He never raised a hand to you like he did to the others. ‘You are special.’ They would say, watching you with a sort of bitter sadness, as if they wanted to be angry but couldn’t find it in themselves to be so, ‘He can’t hurt you legally. He might break you.’ You never understood what they were saying.

 

ONCE UPON A TIME, your name was Mituna Captor. You ran away from home when your owner died. You were afraid of what they would do to you. At this point, you had learned what was supposed to happen to you, and why the old man never struck you. You didn’t want to be a ship; you didn’t want to destroy worlds. You slipped away in the early evening, before the sun had set, then ran and ran and ran until you couldn’t run anymore. You were seven sweeps old at the time. The whole world had just been opened up to you and you didn’t know a damn thing about it. Whispers came from the shadows, telling you that you were doomed. That you would never escape your fate. You wanted to lash out at the whispers and make them go away, but you couldn’t. They were all in your head. You stopped running, stranded in the middle of the desert with no food or water. You fell to your knees and screamed profanities at the unholy terrors that were your gods and goddesses for cursing you with this burden, but your words were whipped away by the wind. After struggling to your feet once more and managing to take a few more steps, you collapsed, curling into a ball and sobbing quietly for the lusus you never had.

When you awoke, an old woman had found you. She was small and thin and frail, wearing heavy, ornate, maroon robes and veils trimmed with silver and gold beads that seemed too rich for someone of her caste. Her horns were ancient and cracked, and she smelled like coffee and soil. You couldn’t see her face behind the veil, but you knew that she had a soft, kind smile. She didn’t speak, but you could hear a sweet, melodious voice telling you to take her hand and follow her. You trusted her, and you followed, and she took you to a temple. She taught you to control your nightmares and turn them into something good. Something useful. She taught you how to control the crackling energy that thrummed through your veins, and she shaped you into the man you became. You never knew her name. Everyone called her the Priestess. You called her Valdam. Mother. You cried for hours when she died.

 

ONCE UPON A TIME, your name was The Psiioniic. You were twelve sweeps old when you became a fully fledged prophet, though you never went blind as the others did. You had only ever cried thrice in your life –when you were branded a machine, that night in the desert, and when your messiah had died- and you were proud of that fact. You were strong. You didn’t need anyone. You were your own master, and you controlled everything you knew. Every last spark in your body was at your beck and call, obeying your every whim. Your nightmares had been banished. You feared no one. You feared nothing. You were happy.

A strange man came to the temple that night, seeking sanctuary for himself and his two friends. He wore no color, bore no sign, and never took his hood down. He had a sad voice, smooth and moving. You couldn’t see his face under his hood, but you knew that he had kind eyes, full of compassion. He smelled like coffee and soil, and when he asked to speak with you privately, you found yourself unable to decline him. He told you that he was a traveler. A prophet, much like yourself, though you knew that he could not see the future. You did not tell him this. He told you that he wanted to end the suffering of your people. He wanted trolls to exist side by side, in harmony. Free of segregation due to color. He asked if you would come with him. You trusted him. You said yes.

 

ONCE UPON A TIME, your name was The Psiioniic. You had a friend whose name only you knew. Everyone called him The Signless. You called him Kankri. He had two followers, whom everyone called The Dolorosa, and The Disciple –or on occasion His Disciple. You called them Porrim and Meulin. They were also your friends, and you were their protector, but between them, Kankri was your closest friend. You had left everything to follow him, and you would gladly do it again. He taught you forgiveness. Compassion. Loyalty. You would follow him to the ends of the world and back, and that is what you did. He preached to other trolls, told them of his visions. Some agreed with what he had to say. Some did not. Many people tried to kill him. He always forgave them. You never could. One time you were ambushed. Kankri tried to talk his way out of it. You told him to stand down. You knew they would not listen. You were right. He cried when you killed them.

Everything happened so quickly. You had allowed yourself to sleep, convinced by Meulin that she could take the day watch. They came in without her sensing. They knocked her out and shackled you with whirring chains that drained your abilities. They dragged you away and put you in cells, and then three days later they dragged you out and laughed as they tortured him. They chained him to a post with irons so hot they burned brighter than his crimson eyes. They laughed as they threw stones and rotten fruit at him. It filled you with an unholy rage, and it took all of the warden’s strength to hold you back when the second arrow was loosed. You screamed obscenities, you spat at the empress’s feet and you had been so overtaken by rage that you have even loosed an arrow of your own, nearly missing her fin. The world spun around you, flashing red and blue, then all cut to black. When you awoke, everything was numbers and code.

 

ONCE UPON A TIME you were called Mituna Captor. Then you were called The Psiioniic. Now you are called The Helmsman.

 

You are more machine than man now, and you are no longer your own.

 

You are Hers, and She is always there to remind you of that.


End file.
